The Cosmic Dead - Psych Is Dead

From the excellent Riot Season Records comes the sixth album by The Cosmic Dead - Psych Is Dead. The album was recorded in Sardinia by the Glaswegian quartet (guitar, bass, drums and synth).

Evil sounds usher in Nuraghe in a threatening way. Hinting at the onslaught to come. But when the band do all come in they are playing a laid back Kosmiche jam somewhere in between Loop and Neu! Like Neu! they use one chord as the basis for this 22 minute exploration. Heading deep into insanity through repetition the whole sound massively distorts, drops back to just drums and then crashes back in, wilder than before. Omar Aborida on bass sticks to mainly one note for the duration. Admirable commitment to the cause. For the last 5 minutes they hit a higher level of intensity. The dying embers of Nuraghe are swept away and replaced by the title track which is a quieter, more experimental beast. Initially meandering for several minutes without a fixed rhythm, the full band do eventually kick in. Lewis Cook's synth swoops all over the place and Julian Dicken is being particularly busy on drums, even getting something of a solo towards the end.

Psych Is Dead leads directly into the final track - #FW. The main riff is a simple run up and down a scale but the accompaniment is, again, quite exploratory - almost approaching free jazz. After almost 5 minutes this abruptly stops, there is a scream and the hammering starts and keeps gathering intensity for the next 10 minutes.

Another brilliant record from the lads. Psych might be dead but The Cosmic Dead's particular strain of high-intensity, wayward, Space Rock is very much alive.